New Hampshire Film Festival 2008

When a young composer gets the call with congratulations on her acceptance to the MacDowell Colony, she is truly excited. But when she is assigned to the Irving Fine Studio, she gets more than a piano, solitude, and a lunch basket. Created as part of the interactive, interdisciplinary performance and installation project LANDLINES, in honor of the MacDowell Colony centennial celebration, “The Ghost of Irving Fine” is a collaboration between six young filmmakers from the greater Peterborough area, and Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert who are MacDowell fellows, and the NH Film Festival’s first annual artists-in-residence.

In a spooky castle laboratory an evil mad scientist is hard at work at his most diabolical scheme, the creation of a killer robot, with which he will finally conquer mankind. The only thing that stands in his way is his own previous mal-formed creations, a couple of bumbling monsters who only want to live out their own fantasy world of astronauts and rock stars. In their quest for stardom, they inadvertantly foil the scientist's schemes, again and again. Winner of the 2005 Princess Grace Film Award, this film was created in under a year of production, by a small crew of dedicated student animators and artists and musicians.

“Gossip Lady” is a weekly series hosted by Seacoast Media Group which focuses on aspects of arts and culture in the Seacoast area. Her white gloves and variety of hats are her signature as she takes the viewer behind the scenes for a unique perspective. Today’s adventure takes her to the Portsmouth Harbor Light House in New Castle, NH where she will be ghost hunting with the help of local experts. Gossip Lady can presently be found at www.seacoastonline.com/gossiplady and on Youtube.

A 15 minute short that revolves around a mother-daughter road trip. The mother, a social worker, asks her teenage daughter to accompany her on a quasi date- a three hour drive to visit a former inmate whom she has a crush. At turns helpful and resentful, the daughter comes along, bringing her camera, a friend, and memories of her recently deceased grandmother, who made a far more difficult trip when she journeyed alone from Kentucky to the big city with its factories and time cards. Official Sundance Selection

It is not featured in any tourist books and the locals don't brag about it, but from an elevated stretch of Route 6 in rural Maine, you can see Jim 'Crash' Moreau's junk car sculpture garden. Painted red, white and blue, the 1970s sedans are frozen in action from Moreau's illustrious 40-year-plus daredevil career. 'When I die,' the aging stuntman says, 'whoever puts my obituary in the paper has to put the name 'Crash' in there or nobody would know me.'Known as the 'Maine Maniac,' Moreau is one of the last auto thrill show veterans still on the road. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, several dozen 'Hell Driver' stunt teams crossed North America and staged auto 'accidents' for family entertainment. The most successful operation, the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, had five daredevil units simultaneously performing at race tracks and county fairs.Hell Drivers smashed through tunnels of fire - and barreled through walls of ice. Animal rights activists be damned, they also jumped cars over circus elephants. The late Evel Knievel was inspired to jump motorcycles after a thrill show visited his hometown fair in Montana. Major car manufacturers used to compete for the advertising rights to auto thrill shows, but the lucrative sponsorships have long disappeared. A few surviving daredevils now fight to keep the tradition alive, refusing to rust away like Crash's junk car sculpture garden. Meet the last American 'Hell Drivers,' a traveling band of stuntmen who earn a living as real-life crash test dummies. At county fairs and small racetracks across the country, these gutsy characters smash school busses, mobile homes, and the occasional flaming garbage truck -- with no more protection than a motorcycle helmet and ordinary seatbelt. Harboring no dreams for Hollywood, these guys barely earn enough to fill their gas tanks. But for them, almost dying is the only way to live. Featured daredevils also include Guinness Book of World Records star Doug Danger, who has jumped his motorcycle over a jumbo jet; Michigan's second-generation 'Hell Driver' Rocky 'Hardcore' Hauri; Firewall champion Louis 'Rocket' Re and his gorilla alter-ego, King Kong Knievel.

'Hollywood Singing and Dancing' is the most entertaining and comprehensive documentary about the Hollywood Musical ever produced. Hosted by Academy Award winning stage, screen and television icon, Shirley Jones, it is a celebration of song and dance beginning with the Busby Berkeley era through the first musical to win an Academy Award in more than 30 years, 'Chicago,' and ending with the highly acclaimed 2007 box office smash 'Dreamgirls.'The best films from every studio, every decade and the most influential stars are included. The journey begins with the dawn of sound on film, to the patriotic feel-good musicals of World War II, through the development of the 'intergrated' musical in which songs became an important story-telling ingredient, through the near-death of the medium when the studio system collapsed, to the genre?s recent resurgence and multi-generational embrace. Fresh, new interviews with stars like Liza Minnelli, Shirley MacLaine, Mickey Rooney, Rita Moreno, Debbie Reynolds, Leslie Caron, Joel Grey and directors Bill Condon ('Dreamgirls') and Rob Marshall ('Chicago') among many, many others give an insider?s insight into the world that helped shape these filmed masterpieces.Mesmerizing sequences interspersed with rarely seen footage and interviews with stars including Busby Berkley, Vincent Minnelli, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly also help us to understand the creative processes that make their films works of art. Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History is a grand historical look at the magic of Hollywood.

"Home Away from Home" documents the live music tradition of the Makem and Spain Brothers. From the traditional Irish folk session to the stage, "Home Away from Home: Live from the Mother Lode Theatre in Butte, Montana" captures the band's devotion to music and story at a time when the tradition is vanishing or repackaged as disposable entertainment. The brothers' songs tell the stories of Irish history, of the working people, of a land whose people have built much of the world and captured all of it in verse. Although the Makem and Spain Brothers perform across the globe, they maintain strong New Hampshire roots.

A documentary that talks about the experiences of two WWII veterans. As told through personal interviews and archival footage and images. A film by Maree Magliocchetti of Timberlane High School. Jury Award Finalist at the New Hampshire High School Film Festival. The New Hampshire High School Short Film Festival, an initiative presented by the New Hampshire Film and Television Office, was created in 2007 to give state high school filmmakers an opportunity to create and showcase short films on the big screen in a statewide competition, while fostering the educational benefits of cinematic storytelling.

In the Cards is a short character study of how a young New Yorker (Stephanie Sellars) pre-interviews her dates over coffee to see if they are compatible and worth more of her time. After a a few men, and even a woman, she gives up for the day. On her way home through the park she just happens to walk by Mr Right, and takes him home.'In The Cards' is a short film from the 2008 NYC 48 hour film project. Marc Dole and Stephanie Sellars met 3 months before the production at the Newport Beach Film festival and discussed wanting to pull a team together and do a real intense project with a small crew. They assembled the team through craigslist and other online job postings and on day 1 of production 23 people who had never worked before met for the first time to complete the marathon 48 hour project. We lost locations to a street fair, getting kicked out of our next location for noise constant rewrites due to lost locations and all the while working together to hit the deadline to burn 2 DVDs as we sped through NYC to Chinatown to make the deadline.